Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
Anne Manson, Music Director
Karl Stobbe, Concertmaster
Westminster United Church
1 December 2009

Roy Goodman, guest conductor
Tracy Dahl, soprano

 

Giuseppe Torelli (1658-1709)
Concerto a quattro in forma pastorale
per il santo natale, in g minor, op. 8, no. 6,
‘Christmas Concerto’

1. Grave — vivace — adagio
2. Largo
3. Vivace

Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713)
Concerto grosso, in g minor, op. 6, no. 8,
‘Christmas Concerto’

1. Vivace — grave
2. Allegro
3. Adagio — allegro — adagio
4. Vivace
5. Allegro
6. Pastoral: largo

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725)
Oh di Betleme altera povertà
(Cantata pastorale per la nascita di nostre signore)
— in seven parts (see notes)

Tracy Dahl

Intermission

Gerald Finzi (1902-1956)
Dies natalis, op. 8 — in five parts (see notes)
Available on MCO's Gerald Finzi: Meditation
— click here to visit our store!

Tracy Dahl

Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
Sir Roger de Coverley
— a Christmas dance

Concert sponsor / TelPay
Season sponsor / The Great-West Life Assurance Company
Print media sponsor / Winnipeg Free Press
Radio media sponsors / CBC Radio 2 98.3, CBC Radio One 990,
Espace musique 89,9 and Golden West Radio

 

Roy Goodman

Roy Goodman is currently Principal Guest Conductor of the Auckland Philharmonia New Zealand, the English Chamber Orchestra, and (since taking over in December 2003 from Charles de Wolff) Conductor of the Bachkoor Holland accompanied by the Royal Concertgebouw Kamerorkest. From 2010 he will also be Artistic Partner with the Västerås Sinfonietta in Sweden. He has worked as guest conductor with 120 orchestras and opera companies worldwide.

Goodman is well known for his work as director and founder of the Brandenburg Consort (1975 to 2001), as co-director/founder of the Parley of Instruments (1979 to 1986), co-founder of the London Handel Orchestra (in 1981), Principal Conductor of the Hanover Band (1986 to 1994), Music Director for fifteen years of the European Union Baroque Orchestra (1989 to 2004), the first Principal Conductor of Umeå Symphony Orchestra and Norrlands Opera Sweden (1995 to 2001), Music Director of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra (1999 to 2005) and as the first Principal Conductor of Holland Symfonia (2003 to 2006).

Born in 1951, Roy Goodman achieved international fame as boy-treble soloist with the choir of King’s College Cambridge in Allegri’s Miserere (Decca, 1963). In 1970 he was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists and completed his studies with a teacher’s diploma, but from 1977 Goodman worked in Europe as a principal violinist — playing as either Konzertmeister or Soloist with Ashkenazy, Brüggen, Ivan Fischer, Gardiner, Herreweghe, Hickox, Hogwood, Jacobs, King, Koopman, Mackerras, Marriner, McCreesh, Norrington, Pinnock and Rattle. He was the first concertmaster of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and during the 1980s he conducted for CD with the Hanover Band the first ever performances on historic instruments of the complete symphonies by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Weber, as well as 14 symphonies by Mendelssohn and 60 symphonies by Haydn. An invitation to conduct a televised Haydn and Sibelius programme with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1989 was the catalyst for his flourishing career as an international conductor. Goodman has directed over 120 CDs ranging from Monteverdi to Copland and has also directed more than 40 world premieres of contemporary music. In 2006 he made his debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and returned to San Francisco Opera to conduct a new production of Mozart’s Figaro. Recent concerts have included the Hallé in Manchester, RSNO in Glasgow and Residentie Orchestra in the Hague, NDR Hannover and SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestras, Graz Symphony, Tampere and Bergen Philharmonics, the Geneva, Uppsala and Swedish Chamber Orchestras, and Auckland Philharmonia in New Zealand. Roy Goodman is an honorary Doctor of Music (University of Hull) and an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Music (London).

Tracy Dahl

With her 2006 debut at La Scala as Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Canada’s premier coloratura soprano Tracy Dahl marked another milestone in a career that has brought her together with such opera houses as the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Canadian Opera Company, and the Chatelet in Paris, to name a few. Her “superlative coloratura” (Globe and Mail), “deliciously accurate, stratospheric” (Opera), is regularly singled out by critics. “Her extreme high notes, and she threw in a lot of them, are easy and spectacular.” (Boston Globe). She has “a voice filled with sunshine, rainbows and laser light” according to Opera Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle finds her “bright, sparkling, and bouncing, accurate and winning.” “Where pure, well-tuned, characterful, and seemingly easy acrobatics through two and a half octaves are required, Dahl is among a relative few who can do it all superlatively well,” comments the Calgary Herald.

Dahl’s 2009/10 season starts with Rigoletto (Gilda) at Edmonton Opera, before she embarks on the production of Nixon in China as Mme Mao with both Vancouver Opera and Canadian Opera Company. She also returns to the Monterey Symphony for an evening of opera arias and, of course, to the MCO for tonight’s concert.

Amongst many other performances during the 2008/09 season, Dahl portrayed Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos with the Calgary Opera and Cunegonde in Candide with Manitoba Opera. She also performed oratorio works with the Winnipeg Symphony and the Portland Symphony.

Among her many notable debuts at major opera houses she appeared as Adele in Die Fledermaus at the Metropolitan Opera (later returning as Zerbinetta and as Florestine in the world premiere and revival productions of The Ghosts of Versailles), and as Olympia in the San Francisco Opera production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann opposite Plácido Domingo (where she returned as Oscar in Un Ballo in Maschera and Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor).

Dahl has performed with every major Canadian orchestra, including the Toronto Symphony under Andrew Davis in Mahler’s eighth Symphony. Other orchestral engagements have included a New Year’s Eve Gala concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra under David Zinman, appearances with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra during the Atlanta ‘96 Olympics Arts Festival and with the American Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of David Del Tredici’s Child Alice at Carnegie Hall. She appeared with the San Francisco Symphony in Handel’s Messiah, and with the Saint Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin. She also performed with Maestro Slatkin at the Hollywood Bowl, joined the Tonhalle Orchestra/Zurich under Zinman for a gala New Year’s Eve concert, and made her United Kingdom debut with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Tracy last performed with the MCO in Mozart’s Mass in C minor in November, 2006.

Christmas Concerto
Giuseppe Torelli

Torelli’s career as a violinist took him to several Italian cities. He later found employment in Ansbach, Germany, at the court of the Margrave of Brandenburg, some 20 years before Bach became involved with the holder of that title. By 1699, Torelli had arrived in Vienna, but he remained there for only a short time before returning to Italy, where he remained for the rest of his life. His contemporaries described him as “a man not only of docile and humble habits but also erudite and eloquent.”

He published eight sets of pieces, variously entitled sonatas, symphonies and concertos. The early works followed the chamber music forms of the day, but over time they made steps toward the practices and forms of the concerto, for one or more soloists. The opus 8 collection, 12 Concerti grossi con una pastorale, appeared in Bologna in 1709, shortly after his death. The eminent eighteenth-century British music historian, Charles Burney, praised them as “the best of his works, and the model of grand concertos for a numerous band.”

The ‘Christmas’ Concerto, the sixth piece in this collection, belongs to what was already a lengthy tradition of music performed in numerous European countries during the Christmas season — most often in connection with Christmas Eve Mass (so does the Corelli work which follows it at this concert). These compositions reflected the Biblical story of the nativity through a peaceful, gently radiant mood. They also offered imitations of the rustic instruments (including shawm and bagpipes) played by the shepherds from the Abruzzi mountains who, in the late seventeenth century, began a tradition of performing in Rome during the Christmas season.

The Torelli concerto has three compact movements. The first falls into two sections, slow and fast in tempo. A separate slow movement follows, highlighted by expressive violin solos, before the concerto concludes with a vivacious finale.

Christmas Concerto
Arcangelo Corelli

Unlike Torelli, whose activities won him acclaim in only a limited region, Corelli’s reputation and influence extended through much of Europe. He was one of the leading violin soloists of the Baroque era, as well as a composer of music that is both appealing and historically significant. His sonatas for violin, for example, helped establish this instrument as the most important non-vocal element in music.

Although he didn’t invent the concerto grosso (grand concerto), one of the Baroque era’s most popular forms, he played a crucial role in the establishment of its popularity. It is founded on the interplay between two bodies of strings: a small concertino (usually two violins and a cello), and a larger group, the ripieno.

Corelli’s opus 6 (1714), his final published work, is a set of twelve concerti grossi. No. 8 has long been the best-known of the set. All the movements except the last present the array of brief sections in contrasting moods and tempos that was typical of the concerto grosso. It is only the soothing, almost lullaby-like concluding pastorale that has specific associations with Christmas.

Oh di Betleme altera povertà
Alessandro Scarlatti

1. Introduction
2. Recitative: O di Betlemme altera povertà
3. Aria: Dal bel seno d’una stella
4. Recitative: Presa d’uomo la forma
5. Aria: l’Autor d’ogni mio bene
6. Recitative: Fortunati pastori
7. Aria: Toccò la prima sorte a voi, pastori

This Scarlatti, the father of the now more famous composer Domenico (he of the 500-plus harpsichord sonatas) was one of the most vital and influential composers of the day. Many of the practices he developed, including the three-part opera aria and the ‘Italian’ style of operatic overture (with its pattern of fast, slow and fast sections), were adopted by numerous composers in many lands, and shaped much of the theatrical music of the eighteenth century. He added new instruments to the operatic orchestra, as well.

His prodigious output included approximately 115 full-length operas, 14 oratorios, 200 masses and 800 cantatas, plus smaller but still substantial amounts of instrumental music. His talent and popularity led to his receiving the support of such notable aristocrats as Queen Christina of Sweden and Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici of Florence. It also won him several prestigious positions, such as music director at the S. Maria Maggiore church in Rome, and at the royal chapel of Naples.

This Pastoral Cantata for the Birth of Our Lord opens with a sprightly instrumental introduction. Three pairs of recitatives and arias follow. The texts rejoice in the events of Christ’s nativity and set out His mission on earth. The second aria, l’Autor d’ogni mio bene (The author of all my well-being) has a sweetly plaintive air, and the last, Toccò la prima sorte (You were destined to be the first), radiates a serene confidence.

Dies natalis, op. 8
Gerald Finzi

1. Intrada
2. Rhapsody
3. The Rapture
4. Wonder
5. The Salutation

“The artist is like the coral reef insect, building his reef out of the transitory world around him and making it a solid structure to last long after his own fragile world and uncertain life.” These words of Gerald Finzi reveal both his philosophical outlook and the essence of his art. His meditative, reserved and achingly beautiful music lingers long and hauntingly in the memory.

Finzi had already composed a motet on words by the little-known metaphysical British poet and clergyman Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) when in 1926 he began setting selections from the same author’s Three Centuries of Meditations as Dies natalis (Day of Birth), a cantata for high voice and string orchestra. By year’s end he had composed the three sections in slow tempi. He regularly constructed pieces this way, leaving the swifter, more energetic portions, which he found more difficult to create, until later — sometimes much later. In this case, the gap was 13 years.

The premiere had been scheduled for the 1939 Three Choirs Festival, but the growing likelihood of war delayed what would have been a golden opportunity for his advancement. The first performance was given in London the following year. Naturally, many listeners’ attention was elsewhere, with the unfortunate result of its drawing little notice. It began to win the greater acclaim it deserved at the first postwar festival in 1946.

The words are those of a newborn child, seeing the world through eyes untarnished by experience. Touching and wise in themselves, they gain still greater depth and poignancy when paired with Finzi’s music. After the gracious yet not entirely untroubled Intrada for strings, the soloist enters in the section entitled Rhapsody, praising all creation in its pure, original state. The Rapture is a dancing, ecstatic hymn of thanks to God for the gift of life, shadowed solely and eloquently at the questioning words “O how Divine am I!” The next section, Wonder, speaks gently of faith in the creator. In the concluding portion, The Salutation, the child gratefully accepts the miracle of its existence.

A review from the Times of London stated: “It would seem incredible that any modern composer could so perfectly match in his music the dewy innocence of the poet’s contemplation of infancy … The result is a work of abiding beauty that moves the listener deeply by its simple loveliness.”

The MCO has recorded this piece for CBC Records as part of its all-Finzi program: smcd 5204.

Sir Roger de Coverley
— a Christmas dance
Frank Bridge

Bridge is best known for inspiring his composition pupil, Benjamin Britten, to compose a precociously brilliant set of Variations, performed by Simon Streatfeild and the MCO last season, on the theme of his Idyll no. 2 for string quartet. He won considerable esteem as a composer, conductor and viola soloist. He devoted the greatest part of his creative energy to chamber music and songs, writing orchestral and piano works from time to time. Early compositions display the influences of such mainstream composers as Brahms and Vaughan Williams. He gradually developed a more individual style, one that drew away from the British pastoral tradition, toward a more abstract, contemporary idiom.

Sir Roger de Coverley is an old English folk tune, one traditionally performed as the last number at a Christmas Ball in Bridge’s day. Bridge completed his highly imaginative and entertaining fantasy on it on June 30, 1922, in a setting for string quartet. Just then he dearly wanted to compose an orchestral work for the upcoming London concert season, but a lack of time moved him to prepare a transcription of Sir Roger for full orchestra instead. He completed the new version on the afternoon of October 21, 1922, just hours before the annual Last Night of the Proms concert. The premiere that evening, with Sir Henry Wood conducting, met with tremendous acclaim. The MCO will perform the string orchestra version that Bridge prepared in 1938. Towards the end, listen carefully for a delightful, sideways quote from another seasonal tune.

 

 

Anne Manson / Music Director and Conductor

MCO's 2010/11 season is sponsored by The Great-West Life Assurance Company.
Support has been received from Media sponsors The Winnipeg Free Press, CBC Radio One 990,
CBC Radio 2 98.3, Espace musique 89,9 and Golden West Radio. Heartstrings gala sponsor:
Mann Financial Assurance Limited. Sponsor of open dress rehearsals: Canadian Bridge Federation.
Arts Accessibility Program: Sun Life Financial.

© 2010 Manitoba Chamber Orchestra